COTI has hosted a written AMA in their Telegram channel, today.
Lots of questions were about the general workings of Djed, which could have been answered by the paper (https://iohk.io/en/research/library/papers/djeda-formally-verified-crypto-backed-pegged-algorithmic-stablecoin/), the IOHK blogpost (https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/08/18/djed-implementing-algorithmic-stablecoins-for-proven-price-stability/), or the COTI FAQ (https://medium.com/@cotinetwork/djed-frequently-asked-questions-f636735be76).
Interesting and not answered before for me were these:
They are going to restrict access to āthe DJED appā: āCurrently, the DJED app is restricted in 30 countries, including the US, Israel, Canada, Albania, and other sanctioned countries. This was a necessary step to be able to open the minting of SHEN to everyone.ā https://t.me/COTInetwork/743257
I donāt know how that works technically. In pure doctrine, smart contracts should not be able to be restricted. But since Plutus has this strange off-chain/on-chain architecture, it is probably possible by just restricting access to the website, since interaction with the contract is not possible without the centralised web app.
They are going to stake the reserve: āTherefore, to create another revenue stream for our SHEN holders, we will delegate the ADA in the contract to specific stake pools, and 100% of the rewards received will be transferred to the reserve (increasing the reserve ratio) and later distributed to the SHEN holders.ā https://t.me/COTInetwork/743289 āVery important to clarify that the stake pool operators that we will be working with will be screened and very carefully picked according to different parameters to ensure the stability, security, and functionality of the contract is not affected.ā https://t.me/COTInetwork/743291
Iām not sure if they really understood, how staking on Cardano works. Functionality of the contract cannot be affected by staking the contract address ever. But itās nevertheless good to have some due dilligence to ensure that the staking rewards really arrive.
The contract will be open-sourced at some time, but the āWhen?ā in the question was not answered: āAccording to the above, it makes total sense to make open source the DJED code and thatās precisely what we will do. The research paper is written in the most detailed way possible because we want users not only to use it but also to understand it, and part of that process is seeing the code as well.ā https://t.me/COTInetwork/743326
In contrast to an answer given to @ChrisSTR8 by one of their admins previously (https://t.me/COTInetwork/733635), they will implement the Minimal Djed variant from the paper linked above, not the Extended Djed variant: āWe are going to implement minimal Djed, but we are exploring the possibility of implementing the Extended Djed in the futureā https://t.me/COTInetwork/743329
Interestingly, the additional fee going to COTI (or their token holders) was obviously not discussed with IO: āAnother risk that occurred to me today, as I learned about how operational fees are going to be managed is that the sale of ADA for COTI will naturally create some downward price pressure on ADA w.r.t. to COTI. Again, this should be negligible if the volume of these operational fees is small. But it could become non-negligible, if the volume grows.ā https://t.me/COTInetwork/743344 The main author of the Djed paper only learned about it today. ā¦
I would still be interested in more details about how the oracle giving the ADA/USD exchange rate to the Djed system works. Which exchanges are taken into account? Who controls the oracle and can change that? What happens if the oracle stops working? https://t.me/COTInetwork/743308 Unfortunately unanswered.
Another unanswered question: āEvery transaction needs to know the current Djed and Shen in circulation and the current ADA in the reserve as per the mathematics. So, only one transaction can be created, signed, and processed at a time. How did you solve that bottleneck with a Plutus contract?ā https://t.me/COTInetwork/743351
So, Iām still looking forward to the open-source release of their Djed implementation, which hopefully will answer some of that.
EDIT: The transcript of the AMA is now online: https://cotinetwork.medium.com/djed-ama-recap-6c710f70e441